I had it in mind to suggest that I be returned at once to my own army, but the arrival of the troops or other cause created a sudden recrudescence of the skirmishing. Piff-paff chanted the rifles; zip-zip chirped the bullets. Little blades of flame spurted up among the bushes, and above them rose the white curls of smoke like baby clouds. On both sides the riflemen were at work.
The officer looked about him as if he intended to give some special orders, and then seemed to think better of it. A bullet passed through the tent we had just left. I felt that my American uniform took me out of the list of targets.
“Your sharpshooters seem to have come closer,” said the officer. “Their bullets fell short this morning. I will admit they are good men with the rifle—better than ours.”
“These are countrymen,” I said. “They have been trained through boyhood to the use of the rifle.”
I was looking at the fringe of trees and bushes which half hid our lines. Amid the boughs of a tall tree whose foliage was yet untouched by autumn I saw what I took to be a man’s figure; but the leaves were so dense and so green I was not sure. Moreover, the man, if man it was, seemed to wear clothing of the hue of the leaves. I decided I was mistaken; then I knew I had been right at first guess, for I saw the green body within the green curtain of leaves move out upon a bough and raise its head a little. The sun flashed upon a rifle barrel, and the next instant the familiar curl of white smoke rose from its muzzle.
The officer had opened his mouth to speak to me, but the words remained unspoken. His face went pale as if all the blood had suddenly gone out of him, and he flopped down like an emptied bag at my feet, shot through the heart.
I was seized with a shivering horror. He was talking to me one moment and dead the next. His fall, seen by so many, created a confusion in the British lines. Several rushed forward to seize the body and carry it away. Just as the first man reached it, he too was slain by a hidden sharpshooter, and the two bodies lay side by side.
Acting from impulse rather than thought, I lifted the officer by the shoulders and began to drag him back into the camp. Whether or not my uniform protected me I can not say, but I was hit by no bullet, though the skirmishing became so sharp and so hot that it rose almost to the dignity of a battle. The officer’s body was withdrawn beyond the range of the sharpshooting and placed in a tent. Though he had sought to entrap me he had made handsome apology therefor, and I mourned him as I would a friend. Why should men filled with mutual respect be compelled to shoot each other?
Albert came to me there, and said in a very cold voice: